[Buddha-l] it's not about belief

[Richard P. Hayes]

On Tue, 2006-01-03 at 12:11 +0800, Wong Weng Fai wrote:

> Maoists, communists, imperialists, "freedom fighters" and "liberators"
> have no problem justifying violence without even reference to an ancient
> religion.

How true. In Harris's book, the emphasis is not on religion as such but
on all kinds of systems of belief that depend on faith rather than
evidence. Judaism, Christianity and Islam are examples of such systems,
but one can find plenty of examples outside the area of religion.

I still like William James on this whole matter. His essay "The will to
believe" is a masterpiece. James was fond of pointing out that the vast
majority of what any human being knows is based on some kind of faith,
or at least some kind of confidence that some person or text is an
authority. He likes to observe that the majority of people in modern
society believe that the earth goes around the sun, but very few people
would have the faintest idea how to argue that conclusion from their own
observations. The same can be said of most scientific hypotheses. Most
modern people believe in Darwin's theory of descent with modification,
but few could make a good case for it. Most non-scientists could not say
why they believe that the earth is billions of years old. They believe
it because that's what they were taught in school.

Even more interesting to me are things that are commonly believed but
are in fact false. For example, many people, when asked to tell you what
Darwin taught would tell you that he taught the theory of evolution.
Well, yes, but he did not call it that. He called it descent with
modification. And many people would tell you that Darwin taught the
principle of survival of the fittest. Well, no, he never taught any such
thing. That theory was taught by an ultra-right-wing rival of Darwin
named Herbert Spencer. Spencer's social philosophy was based on pseudo-
scientific principles that were ultimately discredited for lack of
evidence. Ironically, the terminology of his unscientific dogma was
grafted onto Darwin's theory. 

As Paul Bloom wryly observes, the human race seems to have evolved so as
to misunderstand Darwin. Or, as the Buddha observed, we were all born
with a penchant for delusion, and most of us will die with it.

-- 
Richard Hayes
***
"There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is
striking at the root." -- Henry David Thoreau